Whiskey, Women & Starting Over: My Favorite Things After Divorce

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I didn’t see it coming. After more than twenty years of marriage, I was blindsided — and suddenly starting over after divorce in my 40s with no plan and no roadmap. No slow burn I could have prepared for. No warning I had chosen to ignore. Just one ordinary day that suddenly wasn’t ordinary at all — and a life I thought I knew coming apart in ways I hadn’t been given time to brace for.

I was in my 40s. I had a 15-year-old daughter at home and a 19-year-old son away at college. I had a career. I had a family who loved me and a best friend who showed up immediately and didn’t leave. I had, it turned out, more than I realized.

But in that first raw moment? All I knew was that the plan was gone. And I had to figure out what starting over after divorce actually looked like — because nobody tells you that part.

The First Chapter: My Parents’ House and Learning to Breathe

I stayed with my folks for about two months. And I want to be honest about what that was: it was humbling and it was healing and I needed it completely.

My parents didn’t ask a lot of questions. They just fed me and let me sit on their couch and reminded me, without saying it out loud, that I had been okay before this marriage and I would be okay after it.

My best friend showed up the way best friends do in crises — fully, without being asked, without keeping score. Some people surprise you in the hard seasons. She did not surprise me. She was exactly who I knew she was. I am still grateful for that.

The Rental House: The First Thing That Was Completely Mine

After two months I rented a house. Just me and my kids — my daughter at home, my son back and forth from college. The first home I had ever set up entirely on my own terms.

I want to tell you I was excited and determined. But the honest truth is I surprised myself.

There was something clarifying about building a space that asked nothing except what I actually wanted. What color do you like? What do you want on the walls? Where should the furniture go? Nobody to negotiate with. Nobody else’s preferences in the room. Just mine.

I decorated slowly and deliberately. I worked. I was tried to be present for my daughter the best I could. I stayed connected to my son. I rediscovered, piece by piece, who I actually was outside of being someone’s wife.

The Moment I Knew I Was Going to Be Okay

It happened on a weekend my daughter was with her dad.

I walked into the rental house alone. And it was exactly the way I had left it. Exactly how I liked it. Nothing moved. Nothing out of place. No one else’s things, no one else’s energy, no one else’s anything.

Just mine.

And it felt good. Not good like relief after a scare. Good like something settling into its right place. Good like a door opening instead of closing.

I stood there in my own house — that I had found, and rented, and furnished, and filled with my own choices — and I thought: I did this. On my own. And it’s good.

That was the moment. That quiet, ordinary Saturday afternoon in a rental house with nobody home. That was when surviving became something else.

What Rebuilding Actually Looked Like

I rebuilt in all the directions at once, the way you do when you don’t have the luxury of going slowly. I worked. I mothered. I grieved, on my own schedule, in stolen quiet moments. I rediscovered things I had quietly shelved during the marriage — interests, opinions, preferences, parts of myself I’d been politely setting aside for years without fully realizing it.

The whiskey came later. After the survival years, after things had steadied, after I had become comfortable enough in my own company to sit with a good glass of something and simply enjoy it.

I had been a wine woman for most of my adult life. But wine felt like who I was before. I wanted to discover some new things about myself — what I actually liked when I wasn’t choosing from habit or from compromise.

Whiskey turned out to be one of those things. Smoky, warm, no apologies about what it is. It suited the woman I was becoming.

If You’re New to Whiskey — Start Here

I’m not a whiskey expert and I won’t pretend to be. I’m a woman who discovered she liked it in her later years and has been happily exploring ever since. If you’re curious, here’s where I’d tell you to begin:

A Glencairn whiskey glass — The shape concentrates the aroma in a way a regular glass simply doesn’t. Once you use one you won’t go back.
Whiskey stones — chills your drink without diluting it. A lovely little luxury and a great gift to yourself or someone starting over.
A simple whiskey decanter set — for your counter or your bar cart. Because you deserve a space in your home that looks as intentional as you feel.

Making a New Space Feel Like Yours

If you’re in the early stages of starting over, I want to talk about the space. Because your home — whether it’s a rental, a smaller place, a room you’re rebuilding from scratch — is not just where you live. It’s the physical evidence that you are doing this.

Every choice you make in it is yours. That matters more than it sounds.

A throw in a color you actually love — not a compromise color. Your color. Mine was a cozy grey.
Candles that fill the whole room — your scent, your choice. Your space should smell like you now.
A reading lamp that’s beautiful, not just functional — something you want to look at. Small things add up.
A journal — I wrote everything down in those years. The anger. The fear. The surprising moments of excitement. The grief. The gratitude, which showed up sooner than I expected.
Really good slippers — because coming home to a space that feels warm and welcoming is something you build one small choice at a time.

And Then — Eventually — BigDog

I am not going to tell you that everything led perfectly to BigDog and a beautiful life and it was all worth it in a neat, tidy way. Life isn’t a hallmark movie and I have no interest in pretending it is.

What I will tell you is this: I spent years building a life I was genuinely proud of on my own. I was raising my kids. I was building my career. I was figuring out who I was without anyone else’s definition of me. I learned to sit in a quiet house and feel good instead of concerned.

And then BigDog came into my life. And everything I had built in myself — all of it — meant that I could recognize something real when it showed up. I wasn’t desperate. I wasn’t looking for someone to complete me.

He was, and is, a whole new chapter. A good one. The kind I didn’t dare let myself imagine in those early survival years.

What I Want You to Know If You’re In It Right Now

If you’re freshly blindsided — if starting over after divorce feels like something that’s happening to you rather than something you chose — I want you to hear this:

You are going to surprise yourself.

There will be a day — maybe a quiet Saturday when the house is exactly how you left it and exactly how you like it — when something settles. When you realize you did this. On your own. And it’s good.

That day is coming. I promise you it is coming.

Until then — call your best friend. Go to your parents if they’re there. Get yourself a good glass of something. And keep going.

Tell me in the comments — what was your moment? The one where you knew you were going to be okay? I read every single one and I want to hear yours.

If any of this resonates — the whiskey, the slow evenings, the feeling of finally being exactly where you’re supposed to be — you might enjoy a couple of other posts from this chapter of my life. Black Coffee, Straight Bourbon, Maduro—Always is about the rituals BigDog and I have built together, the ones that feel like coming home. And The Patio Pour is more of the same — slow evenings, good drinks, no apologies for enjoying them.